Hey y'all, The root cause of this issue is that SSE's file loader is outright breaking under certain circumstances. This causes it to fail to actually read save files, which reports them as corrupted (essentially it thinks they're 0 bytes). This is also what breaks everything else - the game is trying to load those things on the fly (NPC dialogue etc) and failing to read anything. Basically: It's not a specific script's fault and its not the fault of string count or anything in your save game. Don't have a fix (yet?) but it will obviously require skse plugin. Edit: file open failed due to too many files open, the reason it works again after restarting is the game is fresh.